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At Tokyo’s Fuchu City, I visited the Kurayami Festival a couple of months ago and saw these drummers resting in the shade of the railway tracks next to the main station. For photographers, having the subject in shadow during the day is pretty much ideal so I took the chance to take a lot of photos! Despite their break, they can’t let the big drums go silent so they kept taking turns keeping the drums sounding using two large baseball bats. Thousands of people followed these drums around the town for the two day festival, so there was an almost never ending stream of people lining up to take their turn at one of these many drums around town. Just walking around in the neighborhood is pretty amazing, listening to the drums booming around town. More photos to come!

Update 2016/Jan/05: Since at least a few weeks ago when I last passed this cafe it has been closed and the tree house part of it removed. Too bad! RIP cute little cafe!

One of the oddest cafes in Tokyo must be the Hideaway Treehouse cafe in Harajuku, where for just one crinkly note can get a nice meal and a drink while enjoying nature at just a tap of the knuckle away. Or as they say, you can enjoy Treedom! I visited last week and took these photos in a gap between customers. The restaurant probably seats about 16 people when absolutely crowded. The thing with it is the tree which they built the restaurant around. When the wind blows harder the tree sways in front of you and it fun to sip on a ginger ale while looking at the birds walking around on the roof on top…

It’s just a few more months until the colorful Jidai Matsuri, the festival of the ages, hits Kyoto, and then a little later Tokyo. I took these photos last year, and I especially liked the men in the blue costumes, representing warriors from the Yamanashi Clan of present day Gunma and Tottori prefectures. The tall halberd carried by the man in the last photo is a naginata, one of the traditional weapons of Japan. These days it is a modern sport mostly practiced by women. I have never seen it performed live but there are sometimes very impressive show fights on TV where one woman with a long naginata blade incapacitates two or more sword fighters on her own! And of course, the little kids put up a great show, this parade lasted the better part of a day, winding its way through central Kyoto. The sunlight was harsh that…

The second batch of Sakura or Cherry blossom photos I took for the Special.T commercial campaign back in spring. This was on one of the very few truly fine days of the spring so I got out and took as many photos as I possible could. I saw one happy couple having their wedding photos taken in the famous park on top of the Yamate area near Yokohama’s Yamashita park. I hope they had a great marriage and a big party afterwards! Just looking at these photos make me long for next year’s cherry blossom season!

You might remember my post on the Three Bauties of Yoshiwara from last year: some exceptionally photogenic and devoted festival participants from the Yoshiwara Gion festival in Shizuoka prefecture’s Fuji City. Well, this year’s festival there were even more of them, and as energetic as ever! All of the dashi (mobile festival wagons or platforms) are wonderfully decked out and crewed by the most energetic members of their respective neighborhoods, but the dashi of the Rokkenchou (六軒町) neighborhood is just outstanding! It’s not all thanks to the beauties though, behind and below them there is a whole battery of drummers and flutists, not to mention the guy on the roof helping to navigate the wagon, or the men, women and kids in front that pulls it and help making sure that no stray tourists (or photographers) fall under the heavy wheels of the wagon! With young people like this, the…

Last weekend was torture and heaven at the same time for us festival lovers of Tokyo. First there was the huge annual Sanja festival in Asakusa with hundreds of years of tradition and 2 million visitors. Then there was the huge Ohara Kagoshima festival in Shibuya on Sunday with a rare chance to see a genuine Kagoshima prefecture festival in Tokyo! On top of that we had the once every three year superbly local festival at the Onoterusaki Shrine in Tokyo’s Iriya district, which is actually so close to Asakusa that the omikoshi from the two completely unrelated festivals could share the same border street without any interaction. Naturally I picked the Onoterusaki festival to spend the bulk of my time, because it is the rarest and also because it is so close to the much more famous Asakusa festival there were virtually no tourists at all. I think I…